Charity-Giving and Charities on a Whole

September 12, 2014July 22, 2016

Today’s precious topic is all about charities and charity-giving. I felt this was particularly appropriate given the gone-viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (this in itself is a bit controversial but I don’t want to babble, so check out this link here to see a roughly balanced argument) and the donations given to the Dog Home in Manchester that got burned down. I am definitely not against giving to charity, just for clarification what I am against, however, is the other sides of charity giving and some aspects of charities. I shall expatiate…

1. Raising instead of giving
I seriously dislike it when celebrities decide to raise money for something as opposed to just giving the money or doing both the raising and the giving, especially when we ALL know that they have enough money to end world poverty together. I am aware that some celebrities actually have charities of their own, hence raise money for their own charity, which is justified and I have no qualms with that. I believe that it isn’t really necessary to raise money for a charity (other than your own) when you already have gallons of money practically just sitting there, like when Lady Gaga put up her vintage Rolls Royce for auction. But if you wanted to buy a new Bugatti or a jet for your hubby you wouldn’t think twice. I mean maybe there’s something I don’t know, like some legal whatnot. But if celebrities can die and give millions to charity, why can’t they do the same thing whilst they’re alive?

3. The charities themselves.
Quite a few charities use the money for something else rather than their actual said cause thus less money goes to the cause but instead into someone’s pockets. Granted there’s admin costs and maintenance costs and all of that. But when charities make promises that out of every £1 80p goes to the cause, you want to make sure that’s true. So that statistic that they’ve given you should account for their admin and their whatever costs.
So, if you’re a curious human like me, just do Google search. Search for charities and look for their spending reports or whatever and find out where their money goes. You might be interested to see what you’ll find out.

5. Image
A majority of the time you see children in Africa having suffered from starvation, and they play that melodramatic music and edit the video to make it appear dark and gloomy and ask you questions like: “Will you help stop this?”.
PEOPLE PLEASE, HOW CAN THEY FOLLOW JEAN ALL THE WAY TO THE FILTHY LAKE WITH A HD CAMERA AND HIGH-SPEC EQUIPMENT THAT COSTS THOUSANDS OF POUNDS AND THEN RECORD AND WATCH HER COLLECT THE DISEASE-RIDDEN WATER AND WALK BACK TO HER VILLAGE THAT IS A 10 MILES, OR MORE, JOURNEY AND THEN WATCHES HER DRINK THE WATER AND THEN PAYS THOUSANDS FOR PRIME TV SLOTS FOR THEIR ADVERTS AND STILL GOES TO BED AT NIGHT, HOW?!

Yeah, I guess there aren’t many ways to bring awareness to their cause and adverts are a popular and effective medium. However, the logic is utterly lost on me. Especially with the likes of Water Aid, who are well established, in the sense that they would’ve had long time givers…
I mean do they have to do the advert in that manner? I just feel like it’s some kind of exploitation.
Additionally, are these adverts truly depicting these children’s lives? I mean it’s likely they wouldn’t drink the water straight, but may heat it to help clean it out or use tablets (if they have some) to clean the water so sometimes it’s not as extreme as they portray.
Additionally, they only show you what they want you to see. Granted, these children may not have taps with running clean water, and don’t have the best quality clothes on their backs but, funnily enough, you see footage of these children smiling and laughing, as well?
We don’t know what goes on behind these scenes. Like, have you ever thought how they manage to convince them to be recorded? Whether thay are fully informed and have given consent?
I feel more justice and transparency should be applied when dealing with these sort of things, especially when they chuck in a celebrity figure.

Like I established earlier, I am all for giving to charity, but I believe that all things must be done with wisdom. Give to a charity that actually does what they say they will do, and if you’re not too sure about it…Google it. Google, mostly, never fails.

One thought on “Charity-Giving and Charities on a Whole”

1) I read something a little a while ago that said poverty line in Britain was measured on whether you had a DVD player. I know. LUDICROUS.
2) I ALSO read somewhere (I do a lot of reading) that something like 3/10 people who did the ice challenge didn’t even donate

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